Great Western Coffee Shop

Am I alone in thinking the forecourt/taxi ranks/short stay car park at Bristol Temple Meads is totally inadequate for such a large and busy station?

Taxi's are constantly causing traffic blockages, picking up and setting down anywhere they can outside the station.

The bus stops for the Airport Express and local 8/9 services are totally positioned incorrectly, with buses also often causing major traffic problems.

The short stay car park is far too small for such a large and busy station.

There is no-where officially appointed for "drop offs".

Surely, now with the current level of use at BTM, there needs to be some sort of redevelopment to better the traffic situation outside the station.  Maybe, as the approach is already ramped, a two level construction is an option, with public transport ( i.e taxi's and buses on one level and domestic cars on another, seperating the traffic and minimising jams.

Maybe its not possible, i don't know, all I do know is that something needs to be done because its a nightmare currently.  Took me no less than 35 minutes from when I started my car to when I went through the traffic lights at the bottom of the ramp today.

I know other parties are involved such as APCOA and Bristol City Council are involved, someone needs to say something.

Could I ask what other users who are familiar with BTM hink about this situation.  It would be very interesting to find out if I am not alone with my thougts here.

i agree peak times an absolute pain in the ar5e,taxi's cause most of problems by blocking whole place up when waiting for fares.
as for the short stay only problem i find is spaces are too narrow.

Hmm.

"Drop-offs" at BTM are usually done on the approach to the taxi pick-up point (cue much sounding of car horns from aggrieved taxi drivers) or in the Airport Express bus bay (cue much sounding of air horns from aggrieved coach drivers).

All of which cacophony of sound seems not to penetrate the walls of the adjacent BTP office - so nobody steps out to 'deal with it'.

C. ::)

Perhaps a solution would be to develop some of the land outside the Brunel trainshed (currently the long stay car park) to allow for dropping off/picking up. You could then ban cars from the station approach leaving it for the exclusive use of buses and taxis.

Actually, I do believe Network Rail / FGW already have some such plan - if you give me a while, I'll try and dig it it out, and post it here.  :P

Believe it or not, the scrambled mess that is the bus/taxi/pedestrian/airport coach pick-up and set-down area at the front of Temple Meads was praised in a case study by the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment. Apparently the highways department made a "conscious decision" to use the "chaos" as a "safety device".



No, really.

http://www.cabe.org.uk/case-studies/temple-meads-forecourt (http://www.cabe.org.uk/case-studies/temple-meads-forecourt)

Oh C'mon! No No No!!!   >:( :( :-[ :'(

Probably the same chumps who redesigned the whole of the Centre in Bristol, laying slabs that made it appear the whole area was a glorified brick paved drive.  ::)

The result has been that quite a few pedestrains have been knocked down by buses, when they turned up rather unexpectedly, apparently 'on the pavement'?  :o

... and, for the benefit of any Portishead contingent here: should I even mention the planners' role in the Cabstand debacle?

No, I rather thought not!  ;D

Those raised 'crossings' around Broadmead caused me a nasty injury one time when I was sat on the bus. I was busily slurping from a McD's milkshake when one of these bumps forced the straw into the roof of my mouth removing a chunk of my palate. Flippin hurt I can tell ee!

its the taxi drivers i was there for a while saw wheel spinning speeding one taxi even pretended to ram another to get him to move forward less than a meter beliving that would get him a fair faster just send the police up there to knock them into touch a few times

For the benefit of those not familiar with "Cabstand", the local authority spent the best part of ^1m redesigning a junction, and installing traffic lights, only for gridlock to ensue. After about 4 years denying that they had cocked up, N Somerset Council finally agreed to switch the lights off for a trial 2 week period. Result... the queues evaporated overnight (as I can testify), and now the lights are to be removed.

Is that the explanation for your display nickname then?  'Bigmacnose' already taken perhaps ;D  ;D

Paul

 ::) Well....my friends call me 'Mac' and I have a larger than average olfactory device. Explanation given....back to the topic  ;)

Having been living in Bristol city centre for 2 months now,I understand what people mean about some poorplanning in the centre. As a bus driver pointed out, who came up with the smart idea of putting a bus stop in the middle of the bleeding road by Old Market.  ???

Here it is: see http://www.plot6.co.uk/PDF/info/Scope_of_Services_v1.pdf - Network Rail, not FGW. ;)

Seek and thou shalt find ;)

I note that on page 1 of this document there is a very prominent notice not to disclose the information to 'third parties'. I trust that part of the time it took you to find this document was taken up by a call to the DIIE to get the necessary clearance for proles like me to read it!  ;D  ;D

Thanks, bignosemac!  ;)

If Network Rail were that worried about their document being "disclosed to a third party, without the written permission of the Director, Infrastructure Investment Enhancements", why did they publish it on the internet ??

And just one more gem, taken at random from that 14 page text:


???

I have read the first few pages and concur with the problems of overcrowding in the ticket hall area. Yesterday (Fri 6th Nov 2009) at 1330ish the queue for tickets, at both the manned windows and the TVMs extended out of the main entrance. The queue for the Travel Centre was also spilling out onto the booking hall concourse.

Whilst staffing all ticket windows and Travel Centre points would help, I think that it is time for a radical redevelopment of this part of Temple Meads. There are, no doubt, problems with re-jigging what is a listed building, but at the end of the day a station needs to be fit for purpose. At the moment the booking hall area, including the PIS screens, entrance to WHSmith and gateline is just too cramped.

FGW have, in the past, tried some solutions to alleviate the problems. I speak from experience; I was once, briefly, employed through an agency to provide Customer Service under the screens to facilitate getting passengers onto the right platform as quickly as possible.

Rail-side, Temple Meads is actually quite a spacious station - it just needs more room before the gateline. The area currently occupied by the 'covered' car-park in the Brunel trainshed could, I think, be better utilised as a booking hall. You could couple this with removing private cars from the station approach to the land on the Temple Quay side of the Brunel trainshed.

Pie-in-the-sky? No doubt some 'conservationists' would decry redeveloping Brunel's original trainshed, but I'm sure with a little bit of sensitive redevelopment it could be possible. So much better than using the trainshed as a car park.

Good point, well made! If you receive a 'copyright infringement notice' and end up in court I'll appear as a material witness for the defence.  ;D

Dontcha just love management speak?

See page 6 of that document:

i too saw the que for tickets yesterday,whilst having a crafty smoke around 14.00 the line of people was almost at the taxi rank cafe,could it be bridgwater carnival travellers causing extra ques? as the taunton trains yesterday afternoon were also very busy.

I too witnessed the long queue's yesterday.

The 13.53 FGW  2 car Taunton service was extremely busy, I abandoned the idea of travelling on that train.

XC services heading south were severely delayed aroung lunchtime yesterday, reason unknown.  I ended up boarding the 12.44 XC HST to Taunton, which turned up at 14.38.

The 13.44 XC Voyager, which turned up at about 14.20, was very busy too.

The Station yesterday, was generally very busy.

Oh, and the forecourt, well, only a moped could of moved there.   ::)

Ah, Bridgwater Carnival. I didn't think of that. Kinda explains some of the extra people I guess. I wonder whether the loadings were significantly higher for a Friday on stoppers to Taunton later into the afternoon. Did FGW provide any extra services to Bridgwater before and after Carnival?

For those who missed the Bridgwater carnival - a video report, from the BBC (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/8348364.stm).  ;)

At the risk of staying off topic, for those who missed Bridgwater the same carnival circuit continues though out the next week -

Burnham/Highbridge (Mon 9th), Shepton Mallet (Wed 11th), Wells (Fri 13th), Glastonbury (Sat 14th) and Weston-super-Mare (Mon 16th) plus an "unofficial" carnival at Midsomer Norton on Thur 12th. More details at http://www.somersetcarnivals.co.uk (http://www.somersetcarnivals.co.uk).

TLM

Thanks, TLM!  :D

Well, indeed at the risk of straying, or staying, off topic: I've added all those events to our calendar.  ;)

If anyone is able to go to one of these carnivals, they really are spectacular!  Great entertainment for any children, and they raise money for charity - so the traffic jams on the way home are worth it!  ::)

Or indeed the crowed trains back from Weston! (woo-hoo back on topic!)

Still straying/staying off-topic, I'm hoping to make it Weston's Carnival - if train times allow! I've recently discovered a neat new (well, new to me...!) photography trick called 'Stereoscopic Imagery' (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stereoscopy) and am desperate to try it out. I recently attended a fascinating book talk about 'Stereoscopic Images', hosted by one of my heroes, Brian May. I've learnt the trick of taking two images of a scene from slightly different perspectives, and when viewed side-by-side with a suitable viewer (or free-viewing a-la 'Magic-Eye' pictures) the scene is rendered in glorious 3D.

To the forum: Please forgive my indulgences....but I may be seen taking photos of Bristol Temple Meads' architecture over the next few days to hone my stereoscopy skills.

as far as i am aware no extra services for carnival,lets face it FGW struggle with the normal service let alone any extra